I have just finished reading Martin Gardner’s Fads and Fallacies in the name of science and an article in John T Sladek’s New Maps where he defends Gardner, himself and Christopher Evans against the accusation they attacked pseudoscience with the same lack of rigor as its proponents.

I should declare my own position up front so any bias I have is evident – something many of those covered in Gardner’s book and Sladek’s The New Apocrypha are accused of doing. I love the bizarre fringes of belief but as a kind of fiction rather than accepting their tenets – the same way I love a good conspiracy theory.

Many of the people featured in Gardner and Sladek’s books will justify their theories by pointing out the gaps in mainstream science and its many errors over the centuries. However the fact many scientists believed in the universal aether and the condemnation of breakthroughs by Galileo and others does not mean their ideas have to be accepted because they have also been questioned by the establishment, and more than the fact governments have kept some things secret means they must be suppressing evidence of flying saucers. Big Pharma’s vested interest in doctors prescribing their medicines does not necessarily invalidate all of their products.

It is also true that science and medicine have often proceeded by trying harder and harder to justify the accepted position on things until the evidence of exceptions becomes so large a paradigm shift occurs – Kuhn’s Structure of Scientific Revolutions has documented this extensively.

What differentiates ‘real’ science from the fringes is the scientific method. Theories are almost never ‘proved’ but they are tested rigorously to see if they fit the facts – not least because the people who believe the previous theories are keen to do so. Most importantly they are tested to see if they work, and if a medicine or technique is only useful in 80% of cases, doctors and scientists will work to see what can deal with the other 20%. This lack of completeness does not invalidate the majority of successes.

The thing that characterises most of the theories detailed in the two books is how they do not stand up to independent testing or need increasingly byzantine adjustments to fit with demonstrable reality. The more outré the theory, the greater the testing needed for its acceptance and dismissing counter evidence as proof of conspiracy by established scientists to discredit the creator’s brilliant insight is a weak argument

To be fair, Gardner sometimes displays his own bias in favour of the scientific consensus in his analysis. I prefer Sladek’s reductio ad absurdum approach – not least because it is funnier. However both make good cases against their targets.

What fascinates me is why lots of people (in the case of the Cosmic Ice Theory and Lysenkism entire nations) want to believe the strange ideas are true.

I think it is because we want simple answers to the secrets of the universe – 42 anyone? – and look for miracles to reduce misery. Faced with months of misery through chemotherapy and debilitating drugs or the option of changing your diet or having your spine massaged to cure cancer, it is not surprising people choose the latter. Having to understand complex mathematics and centuries of investigations to explain why the world is the way it is can seem impenetrable compared to believing ancient astronauts created everything as a stand in for God. Never mind who created the aliens. When a scientific breakthrough also challenges your existing beliefs and prejudices it is even more tempting to go for something that confirms them. It is not surprising that many of the theories examined ‘prove’ the superiority of white men and the inferiority of other races and women and therefore their popularity. None of that suggests that breakthroughs are restricted to trained scientists or doctors